New lore vs Old lore

[ONCHEhap]

I can pretty much agree with all of this, however, i would add that, while the lore fully went off the rails in WoD, it actually started even back in BC/WotLK.
Even back then, they started to change and twist characters into how they needed them, it just wasnt done so overwhelmingly and obvious.

BC was especially bad,then it went back up for a little bit before plumetting again

[MyWholeLifeIsThunder]

just so we're clear... it's modern marvel comic lore tier variety not just ANY comic book lore variety.

Marvel and DC mostly; of course it's not just about the comic books as a medium in general, but about how a type of lore specific to the comic book medium has arisen from Marvel and Dc -and others- It's that sort of continuity where many people work on it over the years, and unlike film and books and video games as a medium, there's this specific type of continuity and lore that seems to exist in comic books -within, not as the whole- that seems against to reboot or reset and instead retcons over itself.

I don't know if we should call it "comic book lore" but it feels the most descriptive, but like, yeah, it's the type of lore less preoccupied with a consistent narrative and arcs and more with preserving a sense of continuity on itself, even when the narrative changes tone and scope.

honestly things could be alright if we weren't litterally falling face first into new cosmic calamities in every other quest chain and international wars to change the face of the world every other expansion

Yeah, I gotta agree. We really don't need a sense of unending escalation as the set up for every expansion. TBH I think that's part of the reason I like MoP as a whole a lot; with an ostensible simple set up, the story still managed to end on a high threat that felt earned without having to be a cosmic level threat from the outset.

[Oneirophobia]

I just saw this on WoWhead and rolled my eyes. I'd like to start this off by saying I am a gay man and all for people being who they feel they are. This Chromie shit is not that. And Qadarin and the other one were not that. It was put in the game for one reason, for Blizzard to say "LOOK HOW PROGRESSIVE WE ARE!!!!" and to use sexuality/self identification as a prop. The Qadarin stuff I actually really enjoyed at first because one of them just casually mentions their husband and nobody bats an eye. It wasn't the emphasis of the moment, it just simply was. Then they get to that ham fisted pandering kiss portion and pretty much trashed it for me. And then to top it off that shit didn't even work! This Chromie stuff isn't any better. Now we have a trans dragon for no other reason than to have a trans dragon. Even invented a ceremony that clearly has never been a thing just for some sort of justification for it.

The bolded part is my issue. This isn't Blizzard being down with gay people or trans people. It's them attempting to look like they are while using you as a prop to do it.

What do you mean Chromie going out of her way to scold the player for being ignorant of "dragon naming customs" in Heroes of the Storm and then them changing it suddenly isn't actually LGBT support?!

Hey, remember when this happened?* But I guess we just don't "get" blizz's "humour."




*For those who are too lazy to read the link or want the context:

Blizz scheduled a band for Blizzcon, band front runner said "anyone who plays Alliance is a faggot and should die" and THIS was blizz's response to it:

"Hey guys, we read and heard all the feedback from BlizzCon this year. The Corpsegrinder bit was never intended to be taken seriously. We are sorry that we offended anyone; everything at our shows is just meant in fun. Thank you all for speaking up. We’ll definitely keep this in mind for future shows.”

Blizz is retconning their casual homophobia into "we were progressive all along!" with this Chromie stuff.

- - - Updated - - -

i still dont know why baine was chosen to appear in shadowlands. He hasnt had any story impact and just seems to be here for the sake of it.

Because his voice actor was already penciled in for other stuff. I think he does some Overwatch voices. You'll notice there is a lot of overlap with "voice actor is in for recording" and "oh look suddenly this character is in the story!" Thrall is in the story because Metzen voices both him and the Jailer as another example.

If you want a smoking gun, I guarantee if Odyn or Khadgar makes an appearance this expansion, so too will the other. They share a voice actor. Similarly, the only reason Kel'thuzad was back in the story was because the voice actor is shared between he and the Lich King and they already had the actor in for Lich King voices.

[mickybrighteyes]

Marvel and DC mostly; of course it's not just about the comic books as a medium in general, but about how a type of lore specific to the comic book medium has arisen from Marvel and Dc -and others- It's that sort of continuity where many people work on it over the years, and unlike film and books and video games as a medium, there's this specific type of continuity and lore that seems to exist in comic books -within, not as the whole- that seems against to reboot or reset and instead retcons over itself.

I don't know if we should call it "comic book lore" but it feels the most descriptive, but like, yeah, it's the type of lore less preoccupied with a consistent narrative and arcs and more with preserving a sense of continuity on itself, even when the narrative changes tone and scope.

I feel like much of this is better referring to what now amoutns to old school comics not the modern "this decade" stuff.

[Stardrift]

Thats what you get when your story has to create and solve a world ending crisis every two years.

The game doesnt have time to create interesting and new characters we care about fast enough.
Ans every year we lose more characters to "we need a boss people will care about" madness or "start of the expansion shock" cutscene deaths than we gain.

So everyone from the original cast has to die over and over again.

I'm so tired of watching power ranger action figures stare at eachother, yelling inconsequential anime dialogue at one another, until one powers up like Goku to pull off a fucking backflip attack and the player intervening with a Kamehameha.

I wish the story went back to the world, culture, factions.. Not world ending events and Funko Pops spouting disposition.

[sam86]

I can pretty much agree with all of this, however, i would add that, while the lore fully went off the rails in WoD, it actually started even back in BC/WotLK.
Even back then, they started to change and twist characters into how they needed them, it just wasnt done so overwhelmingly and obvious.

back then changes were minor not major, only major change was draenei and they apologized for it
now we have holy cows, so i'd say cata started the big fuck u lore, there is no way they added holy cows to wow and expect it to not be memed

[Asrialol]

Main difference between old lore and new lore is that people here watch the old lore through rose-tinted glasses.

[Darknessvamp]

Main difference between old lore and new lore is that people here watch the old lore through rose-tinted glasses.

How is that so when you can literally go and play Warcraft 3 and classic WoW and soon TBC and see that it was handled better than now?

[Stardrift]

Main difference between old lore and new lore is that people here watch the old lore through rose-tinted glasses.

The story at least had a vision being worked on by someone who helped make that vision, and planned to finish it.

The new writers didn't make that vision, hardly understand it, and have shit all over it in favour of making room for their own vision.

Say what you want about the quality of the old lore, but at least it never blew off multiple decade long breadcrumb trails and build up for whatever the fuck BFA and Shadowlands is.

[GR8GODZILLAGOD]

How is that so when you can literally go and play Warcraft 3 and classic WoW and soon TBC and see that it was handled better than now?

I'll agree with WC3 and Vanilla but TBC was pretty damn bad.

[Syegfryed]

Anything past MOP became garbage tier imo, just a nonsense of rectons and rule of cool made for the sake of plot device and shock people

Realistically, they could have ended MOP on dealing with the shas and the thunder king, then moving on

One last hope is they realize that, and just retcon everything past that, Legion and Bfa would have being much better with Garrosh x varian in the frontlines, fighting each other and fighting against the enemy.

[Varodoc]

Main difference between old lore and new lore is that people here watch the old lore through rose-tinted glasses.

This is the correct answer.

Example: Void elves suck, they are a complete asspull and are proof that the new lore sucks!

Reality: The old lore had Draenei, a race that was completely retconned and asspull'd for TBC.

Many here are disingenuous and are not willing to look at the past from an impartial standpoint. It's fine to have nostalgia but it's not fine to act like Blizzard never made mistakes in the past.

[Darknessvamp]

This is the correct answer.

Example: Void elves suck, they are a complete asspull and are proof that the new lore sucks!

Reality: The old lore had Draenei, a race that was completely retconned and asspull'd for TBC.

Many here are disingenuous and are not willing to look at the past from an impartial standpoint. It's fine to have nostalgia but it's not fine to act like Blizzard never made mistakes in the past.

To be fair it's more like

Example: Void elves suck as their existence make no sense, they are a complete asspull as they exist to introduce high elves as a playable race to the Alliance and they completely contradict all previous lore on Void Corruption and are proof that the new lore using Alleria's unrelated Void Infusion to justify their presence sucks!

Reality: The old lore had Draenei as natives to the Outland that were playable characters and had a very specific relationship and history with Eredar, a race that was completely retconned to be the same race as the Eredar, have a another form aside from the Eredar and newly titled Broken and contradicted Sargeras' story as well as introduced heavy sci-fi elements and asspull'd for TBC. It did suck and caused a lot of controversy and Metzen both apologised for treading over the lore and explained how the changes to the race work with the old lore and the nuances involved with Eredar and Sargeras' story and how it can be used to reinforce and further expand WoW's story.

Plus I'm pretty sure everyone who criticises WoW Lore are more likely to point out Blizzard's mistakes than those who just straight up just say "Oh it's great.", "Blizzard never does retcons." or "You just didn't know.".

[Asrialol]

To be fair it's more like


Plus I'm pretty sure everyone who criticises WoW Lore are more likely to point out Blizzard's mistakes than those who just straight up just say "Oh it's great.", "Blizzard never does retcons." or "You just didn't know.".

People are more likely to point out mistakes, complain and give non-constructive criticism online than the opposite. Though people are even more, extremely more in fact, likely to not voice their opinion at all.
So, yeah - you're right.

Loud minorities has always been just that; loud.

[Darknessvamp]

People are more likely to point out mistakes, complain and give non-constructive criticism online than the opposite. Though people are even more, extremely more in fact, likely to not voice their opinion at all.
So, yeah - you're right.

Loud minorities has always been just that; loud.

The subtext and irony of this argument is just fascinating.

[Soon-TM]

People are more likely to point out mistakes, complain and give non-constructive criticism online than the opposite. Though people are even more, extremely more in fact, likely to not voice their opinion at all.
So, yeah - you're right.

Loud minorities has always been just that; loud.

The sheer amount of unintentional irony in this post is nothing short of delicious. Yum

More OT, Warcraft never had "good" (in a literary sense) story, but at least Vanilla's, WotLK's or parts of Cata's were enjoyable enough, cheesy as they may have been. And even pitfalls such as BC weren't so bad, even if only because the franchise at the time still had a wealth of other important characters to lean on. It's akin to sport, you are much more likely to fare better if you are 20 than if you are, say, 70.

[Smallfruitbat]

The story at least had a vision being worked on by someone who helped make that vision, and planned to finish it.

The new writers didn't make that vision, hardly understand it, and have shit all over it in favour of making room for their own vision.

Say what you want about the quality of the old lore, but at least it never blew off multiple decade long breadcrumb trails and build up for whatever the fuck BFA and Shadowlands is.

You Sir, have pretty much summed up my thoughts. In many ways it feels like this feels like the current crop of writers want to make Warcraft into their vision of what it should be. For me, one of the most glaring hints at that was the short story 'Elegy' -otherwise known as 'Fuck you, Night Elves'. Having a millennia old nocturnal race defeated in the middle of the night by red shirts, in their home land. Seriously! That was just bad writing, a stealth attack in the day would have made sense.

[VinceVega]

I don't think the retcons in wow are that bad. Most players won't even recognize them as such an blizz nearly always explains them ingame. They don't just go in and say that is not how it is anymore. There is always an explanation.

That being said: I think the biggest problem with wow is, that they are not really able to create new characters. Either because they are bad characters or the playerbase just does not like new characters.
Calia Menethil for one. I think she is a good character. The forsaken are in desperate need of a character that is obviously not evil.
Flynn was another good one. Sadly many people won't accept him because he is bi. (antoher instance of people calling it a retcon when it is not)
Wrathion was also good but didn't really get much developmetn after mop with a short appearance in BFA.
Bolvar. He DID come back now but is not really doing anything. Maybe he gets some stuff to do later on.

They just don't use what they have. Characters just "vanish" for a whole expansion because story only happens in the main storyline. There are not many minor storylines happening. I cannot even think of one now in SL tbh. The focus is too much on 4-6 characters while everyone else is completly ignored. And with that focus people start to dislike these characters. Sylvannas, Anduin, Jaina. All 3 have a compelling story. But you get nothing else so it becomes a bit much.

The old way of storytelling was basically no development at all honestly. Every NPC just stood where they have been created and that is it. The whole "World is developing with us" basically came in part with cata. I like it way more than the old completly disconnected zones with no long term changes.

[Daronokk]

Old lore (Warcraft 1 to Vanilla WoW) > newer lore (TBC to Legion) > newest retconned lore (BfA and Shadowlands)

[Bagrod]

I do agree that the old lore definitely had more substance.

On one hand that is, because the lore was developed for an RTS game, and especially WC3 & TFT took the story to whole new level. The Story of WC I and WC II was not that particularly overwhelmingly good.

What WC3 & TFT did (at least for me) they added a whole bunch of myterious backstory to the game, that made it really interesting. Especially because we did not know exactly everything what was happening and why (which is often a blessing).

For the WoW bit, I really enjoyed the story parts in Vanilla. Although, you really had to look out for them because they were not as obvious and often hidden im smaller questlines. WoW Vanilla was not driven by "this one big story arc" as Warcraft 3 was, but was mir putting some life into the WoW Universe.

My best memory of replaying Vanilla as classic was my realization, that I was responsible for Zul Gurub to happen. There is this whole extra long quest chain, on how you collect all the fragments to summon Hakkar etc. and only in the end I realized how neat that is, that all this has been woven into the story right away. But you needed some insight from the future to have this recognition.

I think what "killen" the story/lore part in WoW for me is, that they tried to monetize to hard on it and hired partly real shitty writers to sell some books on topics they somehow then had to include into the Canon.

The mess started when they let Broxigar and I don't know whom travel back in time etc.

There was no need for that. It would have been totally finde to let some things stay as a smaller mystery. I think it is never good for the atmosphere of a fantasy world of every single piece of knowledge is revealed.

However, after classic the Lore went downhill not too steep, but still slightly accelerating. Because they always wanted to connect everything to the "big picture" from the old times.

Now this is exactly their problem. Everything that happens somehow has to be part of "the big grant scheme from the beginning to the end" which completely devalues every beloved villian and foe we had so far. Because just in the next XPAC somebody will come along, from somewhere who was the ACTUAL mastermind behind everything.

They should focus on smaller, less complicated arcs that make sense for themselves.

Pandaria could have been a great example for that, if they would not have linked it heavily to old gods and titans again and again. I do not feel the story writers of WoW are capable to deliver such a lenghty story.


TL;DR:

I think WoW story is suffering from the wish to connect everything in one huge story and that their writers are not good enough / have not enough foresight to do that. Thus, I would very much prefer XPACs with a more coherent story that is resolved within the XPAC. Thay should have startet with that after WOTLK was done and the main plot of the original Warcraft was told.